When air cars come to North America will you buy one?

Question

MDI in France has an air car coming to market next year - all internal combustion engines use compressed air to move pistons - this vehicle has the air already compressed and requires no fuel - apparently it costs about one euro to fill the air tanks and then you can drive all day. So I ask you: will you buy one and end our dependence on the oil companies when they are available for sale or will you continue to drive a gas guzzllng vehicle just because... what?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgwfpIOOb-c

Answer 1

no

Answer 2

Compressed air is an equisitely silly way to store energy. I would not have one as a gift.

Answer 3

If they actually work as advertised then they'll sell like hotcakes here providing they're not too expensive, they're safe, and they aren't too small or unattractive. The problem is that MDI has been touting this technology for at least 6 years and has yet to sell any cars (as far as I have been able to find). I do hope this works, but an engineer has pointed out how difficult it would be to store enough energy in a tank of compressed air to maintain highway speeds for the duration thay claim. When Tata Motors starts selling them then we'll know for sure if it's real, if it is then I'll buy one if the price is affordable.

Answer 4

The problems I see are:

1.  It can only go 40 mph...  I can't take this thing on the normal city highways.

2.  It takes too long to charge....

3.  It is very, very noisy...  It sounds like a motor boat that went bad.

4.  Only going 90 miles on a charge limits it's use.

5,  It is really ugly...  Sorry.  But it looks like a cheaply built box with no consideration to style at all.

6.  Anyone driving one of these would be regarded as a pansy, or a nerd.  You need to build a "cool" factor into it.

7.  It will come to France next year and there are no plans to bring it to North America... So, I can even think of getting one.

Answer 5

yes I'm already starting to save any extra air I find laying around so I'll have plenty when I get the car.

got 3 buckets of extra air so far.

Answer 6

mmmhhhmm

Answer 7

Your local gas station won't be filling up the tanks, and nobody will be investing in high-pressure, high-volume air compressors that operate out on the highway any time soon.  If you do the calculations you'll discover that in order to fill up the tanks of such a vehicle in less than the ten minutes you normally stay at a filling station you need an electric power feed to your air compressor that's considerably in excess of what's normally supplied to big commercial establishments.  

Let's try it:  We'll give our car 50 horsepower, which is about 40kW.  A minimal vehicle could run at that power for maybe two hours.  Energy = power x time, so we divide our two hours by twelve to get ten minutes and multiply our power by twelve to get 480,000 watts, or about half a megawatt.  If you'd like to fill up, say, ten cars at a time, you're up to five megawatts, which is a fairly respectable, albeit smallish, utility power plant.  That's gonna be one h**l of an air compressor.

Answer 8

yupperzzz. i HATE gas guzzlerzz!!!

Answer 9

Depends i mean.. if they create any polution then no, but if they are going to help this world then yes because the next thing we need is more polution!!

Answer 10

those cars are a great idea!

but they need a better appearance tho